Today we hear from Talitha, and her walk through forest close to her home in Australia. Let her take you with her into different country – to mine at least. Imagine the tropical sounds of the birds and the feeling of morning heat as we pace out beside her.

It’s the season of Luk (Eel)/Autumn in Naarm Melbourne. On my morning commute I try to make time to wander through an area of local native bush for some brief encounter with wilderness.  No headphones… but rather listening to the birds and winds’ movement in the leaves and branches. No speed for my cardio as I’m passing through… but rather intentional, relational, slow presence.

As the path curves and widens I am confronted by this tree. Is it bleeding? Do trees bleed?! …sit in contemplation of this image for a moment – what arises?

A red sap seems to pour, not from a single place of piercing, but rather the tree is awash – bleeding from everywhere, all at once. 

Is it dying? 

…this is a natural process. This kino (resin sap) is a way the black wattle tree can flush or bind insects that are seeking to damage or burrow under its bark.

The sap says: you are not of me, you do not serve me, you do not serve my flourishing…I’m not having with this.

The season of Lent asks this of us. To pay attention to what has slipped in and made itself at home in us bidden or unbidden. 

How might you sit today – paying attention to your skin, the boundaries of your mind, heart and body… what has crept in and taken time, energy, and resources from you without your consent?

How might you defend yourself?

Today we have a song from Jonny Baker, referring back to an album made back in 1998 after a visit to Israel/Palestine. In the wake of recent history, they have remixed and re-released this (superb) album. We are grateful for Jonny not only for the album for for this unplugged version of one of the songs.

It is now available on Bandcamp here. All proceeds will be going to the Amos Trust.

I have just listened to the whole album, wondering again how we allowed this history to be erased in the overwhelming telling of the story of the war in Gaza.

As Jonny asks below – who is the terrorist? What does this word even mean in an age in which terror is edited out by an AI interface, whilst simultaneously being used as a justification for genocide?

There is another way, but it requires peaceful, determinded, creative confrontation with Empire. We are grateful that art provides a means for us to do this.

Backbone was an album recorded by me (Jonny Baker) and Jon Birch after I had been on a trip to visit Israel/Palestine with Amos Trust in 1998. It was a protest album really with a mix of anger, lament and a tinge of hope telling stories of what I had witnessed. Since the Hamas attack in October 2023 and the completely disproportionate razing of Gaza to the ground and the genocide of its people, we have both watched with horror both at what has unfolded and the complete lack of intervention by the international community. Those songs we wrote back then have been on both our minds and seem sadly poignant now. So Jon has stripped back the album and completely remixed and remastered the whole thing. It stands the test of time we think but is much better sounding. We have set up a Jonnys in the Basement band camp page (jonnysinthebasement.bandcamp.com) and would love you to go and have a listen – see what you think. Do buy the album or make a donation – every single penny will go to Amos Trust for their work in Gaza.

This video of me doing an acoustic version of Terrorist was me incensed at the American and Israel bombing of Iran and the disgusting rhetoric about Epic Fury whilst wearing baseball hats sounding like teenagers playing video games. No mandate from the American people, no international mandate. Just the violence of Empire.

Who’s the terrorist?

This is Kenmore Street in Glasgow, just around the corner from where my son and his girlfriend Rachel live. It is a street on which a remarkable act of community activism and protest took place.

Back in May 2021, a U.K. Home Office dawn raid triggered one of the most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory. In Scotland’s most diverse neighbourhood, hundreds of residents rushed out on to the streets to stop the detention and deportation of their neighbours.

The morning in Glasgow, the first day of Eid, started as any other. However, when neighbours heard through community message networks that two local men were snatched up for deportation, hundreds of people left their breakfast tables, work Zoom calls, and daily lives to rush down to Kenmure Street to save them by putting their bodies on the line. 

It is a remarkable story, which has become a remarkable film, patched together from interviews and phone footage taken by those who participated. It started when a man (who has decided to remain anonymous) saw what was happening, and decided he was going to take action to show his objection to the actions of the home office snatch squad and his solidarity with the two people who were being deported. He knew he would be likely be arrested, but took inspiration from the example of another Glasgow man called Brian Quail who had been arrested over forty times for protest and direction action in suppoort of peace and in opposition to nuclear weapons. Brian died a couple of weeks ago, and although I never me him, I knew him to be a man of deep Christian faith because of shared friends. One of the many moving tributes to Brian after his death can be read here.

The stort of the protest on Kenmore street will live on, beause remarkably, after 8 hours under the van, after a fierce and almost out-of-control stand-off between the local residents and police (19 minibus loads) and after interventions by human rights lawyers, the immigration officials backed down and left. later, both the people who the snatch squad were trying to apprehend and deport were granted asylum and leave to remain. It is one of those all-too-rare instances when people power led to justice and compassion. Hallelujah.

What would you have done? I wonder if I would have been brave enough to even stay on a street lined with police officers in riot gear, let along get under the van.

The film that tells the story is just out– the director and some of the participants were at a local film festival in my town. Check it out if you can.

It is a commonly shared myth that the phrase ‘do not fear’ or similar appears in the Bible 365 times. Whilst this is not true – the actual figure being closer to 100 – there is no doubt that this is a common invocation ascribed to the divine throughout the sweep of the Christian canon. Think of Jesus calming his disciples in the stormy fishing boat, or those meetings after his death, during a time of persecution and state sponsored murder.

Why so many times? After all, the number of verses so many accept as authority for condemnation of same sex relationships amounts to perhaps three?

Could it be that fear is one of the most common ways that power uses to shape others to its bidding? This is true of both secular powers, with their secret police and their tanks, but also of religious powers, who set themselves up as arbiters of eternal damnation or salvation.

If we are to live towards a New Kingdom, based on justice, love and peace, we must also do so with boldness. If love is to be active, not just passive, it will always face opposition from those people or powers who object to the absurdity and generosity of love.

I think of this regularly in relation to the wars we are seeing waged in the middle east. How are they made acceptable if not by convincing people that there are reasons to be afraid? When we are afraid we appear much more willing to compromise our compassion.

What art – what substance of goodness – ever came from fear?

When we feel the shadow of fear, if we take the words of the Bible to heart, our challenge is not to seek places of walled protection, not to close down compassion, not to start a counter-offensive, but rather to once more seek the meaning of love. This feels more important than ever.

We might also learn this from another one of those Sufi poets. This time, Yunus Emre – (1241 – 1321 ce).  Yunus’ poetry made a great impact on Turkish culture, but his poetry is hardly known here in the West. The poem below (and our resistence to the gospel of fear and bondage) might suggest this should change.

The drink sent down from Truth, 
we drank it, glory be to God. 
And we sailed over the Ocean of Power, 
glory be to God.

Beyond those hills and oak woods, 
beyond those vineyards and gardens, 
we passed in health and joy, glory be to God. 

We were dry, but we moistened. 
We grew wings and became birds, 
we married one another and flew, 
glory be to God.

To whatever lands we came, 
in whatever hearts, in all humanity, 
we planted the meanings Taptuk taught us, 
glory be to God.

Come here, let's make peace, 
let's not be strangers to one another. 
We have saddled the horse 
and trained it, glory be to God.

We became a trickle that grew into a river. 
We took flight and drove into the sea, 
and then we overflowed, glory be to God. 

We became servants at Taptuk's door. 
Poor Yunus, raw and tasteless, 
finally got cooked, glory be to God.

     Yunus Emre, translated by Kabir Helminski and Refik Algan - 'The Drop That Became Sea'

Yesterdy, I (Chris) had a long discussion about communion with a group of friends. We were trying to reach a shared place once again of how we might make a refreshed collective ritual around the celebration of the Christian tradition of communion. Most of us arrived at this discussion with some difficulties of what the ritual of communion had become – so often within religious spaces it reeked of pateralism, male dominance and the use of fear and power to control. Then there is the constant shadow of substitutionary attonement and how we are conditioned to see communion as a transaction in which our sin is somehow replaced by the torture and death of Jesus. Our discussion started with a rejection of this inheritance but at the same time expressed a shared longing for discovering new meanings and new forms of shared ritual chains that might lead us forward.

The room contained a wide variety of positions.

Some still carried a strong sense of the tradition that they had inherited. They were able to seperate the shadow from the light- to see the ritual as a gift of mystery. To see the cross as a symbol of ultimate self giving from a revolutionary who was prepared to give everything for what he beleived. From a God who was incarnated in our midst and lived out the best and worst of what we live. The God who invites us to participate in the great adventure. For these people, the communion ritual was still central, still vital.

Others saw communion as an invention of Paul. They saw it as an imbalance between the priestly and prophetic traditions, in which the radical call of Jesus was codified into a blood ritual. They pointed to very early documents lile the Didache in which the communion service bore no reference to this blood ritual.but rather seemed to be a shared meal- it was about feeding one another. For them, the only way they could envisage communion was in the form of this kind of shared meal- sometimes called a Agape meal.

Others were neutral- communion had simply slipped down their agenda. Some Christian traditions never made a big deal of it anyway (Church of Scotland, non conformist traditions and so on) and so they were happy to just go with the flow.

My own perspective is informed by something slightly different. The way that I am currently understanding my relationship with the living God is through the idea of her being the am-ness of all things. She lives in everything, even in me. In this context, communion is a process of recognising this reality. The Christ, even the Crucified Christ, calls me to connect with our beautiful broken earth, and this is the communion that I find most important at the moment.

We agreed in the end to accept our variety of approaches – to collectively explore different ways of making communion, seeking meaning in difference.

Here is my own communion liturgy, Imagine sharing it in the place pictured above.

Communion

BREAD
As you take the bread, describe what it means to you, right here, right now
THE REST LISTEN ONLY


This is my body
Made from the same atoms as yours
Walking the same roads that you walk
Thrilling to the same touches
Recoiling at the same pains 
We are the same
We are given to each other
Woven together
Me in you
You in me
Through me, you are
Through you, I live
Together we will love.




WINE
As you take the wine, what does the word ‘redemption’ mean to you right now in this place. 

This is my blood
Pumping at the soft centre
Of all things that are
Or ever were -
Or ever come into being

I am life
I am the am-ness that makes anything what it was meant to be

I am the substance sometimes known as love
That leaks and leaches into even the darkest places

Drink deep of me my friends
I am overflowing
I am poured out at this feast
I give you every last drop, so
Drink deep.

Dipping in to this anthology of poems from 2018 is a deep pleasure for me (Chris) because I always find something fresh and lovely. This collection was a labour of love, a combing and gathering of poems from so many places and people. I now know some of the poets, but I do not know Pia, who wrote today’s poem.

I love this poem because it is honest and human. It speaks of a relationship with the divine that is not manufactured, but arising from the messy reality of what our lives often become.

Steve Page is on a roll just now, and today we bring another one of his poems, one which seem more relevant than ever.

Before my enemies

(‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies’ – Ps 23)

The Lord’s Table, prepared in the presence of our differences,
somewhere where we can sit side by side,
or possibly face to face, with nowhere to hide
– only separated by breads and fruits and meats and wine,
taking our hands from our swords, and raising them, not in anger,
but to toast the opportunity for respite, perchance to peace
replacing the clash of blades with the meeting of cups
filled from the same jars
– a miracle of sorts.

I used to think the table in Psalm 23 was just for the writer – to demonsrate God’s favour on him and distain for his enemies. But a table from which the writer can offer hospitality seems more apt and more consistent to the God I know.

What is this thing we know as the holy?

In my earlier life, I knew it to be the other- something away from me, that was certainly not me. I could not be it, nor was I able to be in it, not even with the promises made by substitutionary attonment. It would take more than that to make me acceptable. Nevertheless, I spent a long time trying to conjure up holy spaces with music. I was a ‘worship leader’. It was a serious, central calling on my life- it was my identitiy and almost all of my spiritual striving. I was good at it.

Then I started a journey away from those non-litutgical (yet still very litutgical) worship services, towards a totally different kind of spirituality. I started to see that thing that we call Holy in very different ways- it was not other, it was truest centre – even the truest centre of me. It was not removed, it was always present. It was not repelled by my brokenness, it was compelled by it. It was not somewhere else, it was right here.

The clues were always there- remember those words recorded as being spoken by Mary, the mother of Jesus about being a poor thing lifted into the love and glory of God? How the high were being made low and the low high?

Not long ago, most ‘worship music’ triggered me. It took me back to a place of striving towards that other holiness- the one that I could never attain. It is with deep joy now – the sort that makes me weep – that I listen to the music of The Many, whose music we are grateful to share through this lent journey. Let this wash over you;

Lead us from death to life, from falehood to truth. Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill our lives, our world, our universe. Peace peace peace.

So we say during our Iona Community liturgy each time we meet. It always give me pause, because peace is not wafted down from heaven like some kind of miasma – it requires the consistent work of love. It is so easy to get sucked into cycles of seperation which start to sow the opposite into our lives. So easy to let the screens shield us from the humanity of the other or the visceral toxification of our planet.

What does peace making look like to you? In an age of yet another imperial war, we rightly focus on the big picture, but it is only the small and local that most of us can access or influence. But perhaps this is the point- we start where we are, in the mess of our ordinary. Love is not abstract, it is above all things, local.

Blessed are the peace makers…

Blessed are those whose find themselves
No longer vindicated
By the failure of others

Blessed are those whose borders lie open

And whose cartographers no longer
Conspire

Blessed are those who put off
Their badges of office
And reveal who they are
Not who they want to be

And blessed are those
Who lie down like a bridge
For others to walk upon

Whose sinews take the strain
Of two way traffic

And blessed are those who seek peace
In an age of war
And speak of love
In a time of revenge

Blessed are you
Sons and Daughters
Of the Most High God

Agents of
My Kingdom

From ‘Listing’, published by Proost in 2012.

Today, another poem from Steve Page. Heaven is a concept many of us struggle with – it is one of those abstract ideas that has perhaps been too often abused by institutional, colonised faith structures. This poem might just set you free from that kind of heaven.

Coronation heaven

You said no heart has imagined,

but you gave a few hints

of a massive mansion, a river

and a fruit tree with 12 varieties,

sprouting monthly.

You said we couldn’t imagine

what you’ve got prepared,

but I can’t imagine anything beats

a Coronation Chicken sandwich,

with Branston,

on a warm summer’s afternoon

with friends and laughter

and Monty’s head

resting hopefully on my knee.

You called it paradise

and you mentioned wine.

If that comes with a new body –

one that doesn’t protest

to a fine Merlot

then that’ll be fine with me.

That would be paradise.

That’ll be heaven indeed.

So long as you don’t forget

the Coronation Chicken

and the pickle.

[1 Cor 2.9 … no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.]

You can grab yourself one of Steve’s wonderful books here.